Jean McConville’s son recounts her death at the hands of the IRA, as Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams is probed over the horrific murder

AGED 11, Michael McConville watched his wailing mother dragged out of the family home by gunmen, his terrified siblings clinging to her legs as she was taken to her death.

A week later they came for him.

As a massive political controversy blows up in the UK over the alleged role of top Northern Ireland leader Gerry Adams in the IRA execution of Jean McConville, the woman’s son has spoken out about that horrific night, its immediate aftermath — and the fact that he still sees his mother’s killers walking the streets as free men today.

In one of the most brutal incidents of the Ulster “Troubles” — a period in which the terrorist Irish Republican Army and Protestant paramilitaries killed almost 3500 people while the police and soldiers tried desperately to keep order — the widowed 37-year-old was abducted and executed for allegedly being an army informer.

Her killers’ claims, including that she used a walkie-talkie to report on the movements of IRA operatives, were found to be false by an official inquiry. Her remains were only found in 2003, 31 years after she was bundled, terrified and pleading, out of the family’s Belfast high-rise to her doom.

Still sees her killers walking free today ... Michael McConville, the son of Jean McConviSource:AP

Some of the thugs who barged into the Divis flats unit were masked; others weren’t, and a number were neighbours of Mrs McConville and her ten children, whose ages ranged from six to 17.

Weeping with fear — she had been beaten up by the IRA the night before — she was dragged to the door, Michael McConville recounted.

Unmasked IRA members calmed the sobbing youngsters by calling them each by their first names and asked one of his older brothers to come with their mother outside. Once at the stairwell, one IRA member stuck a gun to that boy’s head and told him to “F*ck off”.

“We knew these people by name and they knew us by name,” he told the BBC.

“We held on to our mother and (were) crying and screaming and our mother was crying ... she was squealing as well because she probably knew that if she went outside what she was going to go through from the night before.”

She was wrong. It would be far worse.

The children looked out the window and saw the gang putting their mother into a van, which drove off with one car in front and one behind.

She was never seen again, until her remains were found above a beach — her skull shattered by a bullet.

Remembered three decades after her death ... the sons of Jean McConville carry her remainSource:Getty Images

The traumatised children’s horrors were far from over, however. Their father had died of cancer a year earlier so they were split up and placed in care.

Michael was put in a children’s home.

“I knew then that my mother was dead,” he said.

And just days after the abduction of his mother, they made clear to Michael the repercussions of speaking out.

“They brought to me to a house and tied me to a chair. They were beating me with sticks around my heads and my arms,” he recalled.

“They put a gun to my head and said they were going to shoot me. They fired a cap gun and stuck a penknife in my leg.

“They said, if you tell anything about any of the IRA, we’ll come back and we’ll shoot you, or we’ll shoot one of your family members.”

With chilling finality, a member of the IRA visited the children a few weeks after her death to drop off her purse and wedding ring.

It is believed the fact she was a Protestant, who had married a Catholic and moved to a predominantly Catholic/Republican area, had fuelled suspicion against her.

Despite the injustice, the killers were never brought to justice.

To this day, Michael McConville said, he sees some of these IRA veterans walking down the street in Belfast. And to this day, he fears testifying against them.

I never told anyone who it was. I still haven’t told anyone who it was,” McConville told BBC radio.

Reign of terror ... the IRA conducted a violent 30-year campaign against British rule befSource:Supplied

“I wouldn’t tell the police — if I told the police a thing, either me or one of my family members or one of my children would get shot by these people.

“Everybody thinks this has all gone away — it hasn’t gone away.”

He said he still saw some of those responsible for abducting his mother, and “when I see them the blood boils in my body. I can’t stand these people for what they’ve done.”

But he added: “I have a young family. I don’t want nothing to happen to them. I think if my mother was alive today, she wouldn’t want anything to happen to them.”

The IRA only admitted to the McConville murder in 1999, two years after a ceasefire ended the group’s bloody three-decade battle for British-controlled Northern Ireland to become part of the Republic of Ireland.

It was the bitterest of victories for the orphaned McConville children, whose lives were indelibly scarred by her disappearance.

After being placed in different foster homes they grew up strangers to each other.

Some siblings even became IRA supporters themselves and believed the IRA’s depiction of their mother as a British Army scout, the Associated Press reported.

He has long been dogged by the unsolved murder but had not expected to be arrested by police who questioned him for much of yesterday.

Under arrest ... Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams.Source:Getty Images

Charge or release ... the Antrim police station where Adams is held.Source:AP

Michael’s sister, Helen McKendry, has campaigned for years to have Adams brought to account.

“I’m hoping against hope that he doesn’t walk out free,” she told The Associated Press. “Everybody, the dogs in the street, knew he was the top IRA man in Belfast at that time.”

Under British anti-terror law, Adams, 65, must be charged or freed by Friday night, unless police seek a judicial extension to his interrogation.

Under British anti-terrorism laws authorities can apply to detain him for 28 days without charge but this is seen as unlikely.

Yesterday Northern Ireland’s Deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness claimed the arrest of the Sinn Fein leader was an attempt to destabilise the Ulster peace protest, the remark prompting Prime Minister David Cameron to come out and deny the claim.

“We have an independent judicial system, both here in England and also we do have one in Northern Ireland and there has been absolutely no political interference in this issue,” Mr Cameron said.

“We have independent policing authorities, independent prosecuting authorities. Those are vital parts of the free country and the free society we enjoy today.”

Northern Ireland’s first minister Peter Robinson also denied any political motivation behind the arrest.

“Is anybody going to say to me that if the police are aware of claims and evidence in relation to such a barbaric killing that it would be political policing for them to question those who have been suggested to have been involved?” he said.

“I would suggest to you that it would be political policing if the Police Service of Northern Ireland had not questioned those that were deemed to have been involved in any way.”

Adams, 65, has long been a hate figure in Britain despite his remaking from IRA apologist to peacemaker then populist opposition politician in the Irish parliament. He has denied the claims he was involved in the murder of Mrs McConville which he described as “malicious allegations”.

He was arrested after police acquired interviews recorded by a researcher into the Troubles which included testimony from former IRA man Brendan Hughes who claimed Adams was responsible for the murder.

Under the 1998 Good Friday agreement, which drew a line under 30 years of sectarian strife in the British province, those convicted of paramilitary murders during the conflict would have life sentences reduced to two years.

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